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10 Proof Points – Why Customer Experience Is the Next Big Thing

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If you’re bombarded as much as most marketers are with pushed content, then you’re probably skeptical of one more claim for the “next big thing”. Every marketing technology and service provider, every specialized association and publication, and every “independent” pundit has at one time or another proclaimed the “next big thing” you need to pay attention to – and of course invest in. Even when they present proof points, I take the claims with a grain (sometimes a heaping teaspoon) of salt.

So hearing that the next new big thing all marketers need to prioritize in their 2015 budgets is end-to-end customer experience, I thought “yup, just another set of projects in a marketer’s already bulging at the seams budget.” Even though it was a respected Gartner colleague who said it, and even though logically it made sense, I wasn’t about to jump on the bandwagon without proof.

Digging for Data

I’ve admitted before to being a data junkie. Always have been, always will be. So I went looking for evidence in primary research surveys, in interviews with C-level execs, in publications and blogs, in software and service spending forecasts, you name it. And I found lots of it – in fact a lot more than I expected to find.

One big problem is that the term “customer experience” means different things to different people – people in the same function and in adjacent functions. But let’s not go down that rat hole – I picked a commonly used definition and said “good enough”.

Next came the analysis to evaluate what was most credible – who said it, how many people said it, what kind of people, in what kind of companies, when did they say it, how did they phrase it …. you get the idea. I focused on what large and very large companies in sufficient numbers said as the basis, supplemented with name-brand company executives’ comments. I wound up with over four dozen strong proof points.

10 Proof Points

To cut to the chase, here is a subset of the proof points – a list of 10 findings from primary research surveys – that convinced me customer experience is indeed the “next big thing” that requires investment in people, process and technology for the foreseeable future. The list is in alphabetical order by the firm who conducted the research. Note that some research requires registration. Gartner research requires subscription.

“85 percent of customers are frustrated by dealing with a company that does not make it easy to do business with them, 84 percent by companies promising one thing, but delivering another; and 58 percent are frustrated with inconsistent experiences from channel to channel.”

“Marketers believe that customer centricity—and the customer’s belief that they are engaged with a customer-centric organization—is critical not just to the business, but also to the individual marketer’s success.”

“39 percent of respondents agree that the very definition of customer centricity is being established at the very top of the organization with the president/CEO”